I'm kind of disappointed with the internet, really

[TrancedelicBlues]

Of course, i grew up an avid science fiction reader, so I expected something like the internet in my lifetime...

 

but so far,it mostly blows...

 

i mean, this website is cool, and i have found a few others that i like, but more and more this whole web thing seems mostly like a big waste of time

 

Of course, in all those SF novels i read when i was younger,you could could use your computer terminal to read any book ever published, watch any movie or TV show ever made, and pretty much see any music concert that had ever been recorded...

 

 

and email had video and audio... it could even happen in real time, like a "videophone"

 

also, no mention was ever made in any SF novel i ever read of spam, trolls, or porno

[ptuzer]

I talk to my girlfriend and friends all the time with iChat. As a matter of fact I met my girlfriend on the net. I save thousands of dollars in Long distance and mobile phone charges. It's a great form of communication.

[Sylver]

My mind boggles that anyone is under whelmed with the sheer amount of data available with an internet connection.

 

If you know how to look, you can find anything. I used to sit around and wonder "I wonder how ____ is made" or "What was the name of the woman ..." or "I need a recipe for ...", but instant satisfaction is a click away.

 

My god, the collective sum of all human knowledge is there, waiting to be googled.

 

Of course reading about what it's like to play guitar, or visit Amsterdam are wholly different from the real experiences, so you gotta unplug sometimes and do your own research.

[Bbach1]

The Internet is a great research tool, communication tool, or shopping tool. It can also be a waste of time. Guess it depends on what you want out of it. It's simply a connection. You have to decide what to do with that connection and the information available.

[whitefang]

While forums like this and some others, and the encyclopiedic information to be had in some cases is a plus, along with e-mail and IM, there is much disappointment to be had on the net. For example, in trying to find out some information concerning some repair that needs doing to my car, an hour on the net only hooked me up with numerous people and places that were only willing to sell me books on the topic.

 

So in some ways, the net hasn't been the savior to my needs everyone tries to tell me it is, but I'm not really too disappointed by it all. I mean, think about it. Hell, when I was a kid, owning a "walkie-talkie" that had a longer than two block range was considered a technological wonder. The PC is still a miracle of sorts to me, even if I only play "Masque Slots" on the damned thing. The iNet is icing on the cake. I play "Texas Hold 'Em" poker on the pogo site available through my AOL service, and there's a small chat room for use by those at the same table(or for all playing any of the other games they offer). I find myself communicating with other Pogo members from across the country, or across either ocean instantaneously. I still marvel. And it grinds me for some reason that many people have become so jaded by this technology that they gripe about dial-up being "too slow"! They seem to forget how slow it was 20 years ago! OOPS! There WASN'T any dial-up 20 years ago!

 

Sorry!

 

Whitefang

[g.]

My penis is now a mile long and my breasts keep the Netherlands afloat.

 

I'm satisfied.

[TrancedelicBlues]

Originally posted by greenboy:

My penis is now a mile long and my breasts keep the Netherlands afloat.

 

I'm satisfied.

 

i am glad somebody has benefitted!

 

i want my robot maid and my flying car!!

[Wewus432]

I downloaded The Internet last night, and it's running pretty good, but I think I need more RAM.

[Raymar]

I seem to remember before getting on the internet 10 years ago I'd never stop writing or editing music for an internet break, but then I'd probably go for a walk or turn on the tube.

 

Yeah, I remember surfing the net with my Atari and a 2400 baud modem with a text only connection using Gopher for $2 per hour, that really blew. It would cut out alot and I'd have to reconnect after waiting three hours to download some file only to realize it disconnected durring the last 3k, oh the stress headaches.

[steelandre]

Originally posted by greenboy:

My penis is now a mile long and my breasts keep the Netherlands afloat.

I'll refrain from commenting on the size of your penis other than I don't know if I should congratulate you with it or sent you my condolences.

 

But hey, about that 'breast power': on behalf of the Dutch I would like to thank you for your supporting breast. I'd say, the more, the better! We like breasts over here and consider them totally natural (sans silicone implants, that is), and have no problem in proudly showing them in public or on national TV. Just make sure you don't do that on the US mainstream media...

 

steelandre.

[DJDM]

Originally posted by TheWewus:

I downloaded The Internet last night, and it's running pretty good, but I think I need more RAM.

Wewus for the win.

 

Like everything in life, you get out of the net exactly what you put into it.

[boosh]

Originally posted by Sylver:

Of course reading about what it's like to play guitar, or visit Amsterdam are wholly different from the real experiences, so you gotta unplug sometimes and do your own research.

What a coinsidence..... I have to play guitar in Amsterdam in three hours

[g.]

The internet allows me to have REALLY HUGE AVATARS. What's not to like? It's fun to make people load a couple hundred K over antiquated dialup and snicker as my picture crowds their teensy little limited rez monitor. Hah - I have 21" (not really a mile as reported earlier - spam filtering reversed the growth).

[Sylver]

Originally posted by boosh:

Originally posted by Sylver:

Of course reading about what it's like to play guitar, or visit Amsterdam are wholly different from the real experiences, so you gotta unplug sometimes and do your own research.

What a coinsidence..... I have to play guitar in Amsterdam in three hours

That's funny, I want to play guitar in Amsterdam some day. Actually, I sort of have this fantasy of opening a blues club there. Think regional Americana cuisine (chili, cheesesteaks, BBQ, etc) and blues would go over there?

[g.]

The internet is just like high school. It's tough to find a class where one peer group or another doesn't dominate. It's not the internet that's a joke.

[G. Ratte]

 

Of course, in all those SF novels i read when i was younger,you could could use your computer terminal to read any book ever published, watch any movie or TV show ever made, and pretty much see any music concert that had ever been recorded...

and email had video and audio... it could even happen in real time, like a "videophone"

The big p2p networks are almost there with the media stuff, through it's far from legal. People have taken to scanning books & comix and ripping audiobook CDs too. If there's any sort of niche for something, you can probably find it. Say if you want episodes of "Six Million Dollar Man," that's no problem.

 

Skype is pretty big with the Voice-over-IP thing, that's happening and a lot of people do Instant Messaging or IRC all day.

 

Try out an RSS reader and get it tracking a hundred-something newsy sites; it's insane. Too much stuff, you've got to limit it... think of it as "meme-absorption time" and you can devote x-amount to it daily.

[g.]

The trick is getting agent tailoring that isn't coopted.

[Dennyf]

I'm not disappointed in the least! Sure, it's awash in crap, and thank Gawd it is! So much better than somebody, somewhere imposing their own ideas about what's "worthwhile," or "appropriate."

 

This results in a lot of chaos, and a very poor signal-to-noise ratio. But if you use your head, and phrase search terms well, you can usually find what you want!

 

David Brin forsaw the way the internet has developed back in '91 in his novel "Earth."

[g.]

Yep - Brin rules too. Even if Kevin Costner kind of did slaughter the Postman thing ; }

[G. Ratte]

The trick is getting agent tailoring that isn't coopted.

Agents! Man, has anybody gotten a working, useful agent-type thing out yet?

 

That'd be fantastic if you could tell one, "I have 15 minutes free for this, so show me the news" and it would know to prioritize stuff to only show you big stories summaries. Another time, you could say "I have 3 hrs, show me the news" and you'd get all sorts of other stuff, or more in depth. Maybe you could pick width or depth... lotsa different items, but fairly shallow coverage... or fewer items, with more explanation. That'd be really something.

[g.]

Right now, what we have for agents, are Portals. That sucks. Spammers!

[YourMotherShouldKnow]

Originally posted by TrancedelicBlues:

Of course, i grew up an avid science fiction reader, so I expected something like the internet in my lifetime...

 

but so far,it mostly blows...(

What are you contributing to the internet experience? Sounds like you're more of a bystander than a participant. Are you an "extra" in this movie or one of the leads?

[Hound Dog]

I feel grateful that I was able to particpate in what I think will become known as the "golden age" of the the internet, roughly between 1998 and 2001, before the IT world fell apart. Things were happening at unbelievable speeds, new sites were popping up like mushrooms (mushrooms?) and you could do just about everything for free (sometimes you might even get paid). Before the reality of building businesses with play money hit the fan, the internet was pretty cool. It was full of a bunch of crap, but it was cool.

[nursers]

If you think the internet sucks then you OBVIOUSLY haven\'t been here

[ricknbokkerv2.0]

I remember seeing a commercial a few years back.... Avery Brooks going on about something, and he's saying "The cars!!! Where are the flying cars???!!"

 

That's what I'm waiting for....

 

In the meantime, I'll have all the cybersex I can handle, thank you.

 

Ricky

[theblue1]

Originally posted by TrancedelicBlues:

Of course, i grew up an avid science fiction reader, so I expected something like the internet in my lifetime...

 

but so far,it mostly blows...

 

i mean, this website is cool, and i have found a few others that i like, but more and more this whole web thing seems mostly like a big waste of time

 

Of course, in all those SF novels i read when i was younger,you could could use your computer terminal to read any book ever published, watch any movie or TV show ever made, and pretty much see any music concert that had ever been recorded...

 

 

and email had video and audio... it could even happen in real time, like a "videophone"

 

also, no mention was ever made in any SF novel i ever read of spam, trolls, or porno

Wow.

 

Not me.

 

I also grew up on sci-fi and even continued reading some of it through my 20s. (Last good sci-fi read: Zelazny's Lord of Light. Unfortunately, I've read about 20 more sci-fi novels since then.)

 

But I love the internet.

 

After a decade of promises slowly come to fruition, it's really got there, for me.

 

It's completely revolutionized my reading and my news aquisition. While I used to have stacks of periodicals always building up (two dailies and the Wall Street Journal and four recording/music magazines for a while) I now get virtually all my news and periodical lit on the web.

 

And while the old Emusic allowed me to fill in vast missing stretches in my music collection, my latest flame, MusicMatch On Demand (which I'm listening to now, just as I do from 3-12 hours a day) has all but sidelined my 600 or so CDs, 19,000 (legit) Mp3s, and 1200 LPs, since I with a few clicks and maybe a couple of keystrokes I can load up anything (well, about 80-90% of anything) from old favorites (everything from Big Youth to George Jones to DJ Nobody) to brand new albums (recent faves have included the new Smile, the new Elliot Smith, the last Mars Volta). If I want to hears something like Smile, in fact, which I would probably never buy, it's right there. I can listen to as little or as much as I like. I love MMOD. For $9 a month it's pretty well obviated my whole record collection. (Not that I'm throwing it out, mind you. I've been hauling that stuff around for pretty much a half century.)

 

And then there's comparison shopping. Growing up in southern California, I grew up looking for deals. The net is a great place to find them.

 

And then there's consumer info -- just about anything you're looking for, reviews both formal and informal, feature lists, horror stories, you name it.

 

And maps. Man, I've always had a thing for maps.

 

And reference works. I flippin LOVE being able to just look up a fact like that. I almost always take my laptop to the coffee shop with me. I can't tell you how many times I've quickly looked up a fact, or a forgotten name, settled an argument In fact I just amazed one of my Christian friends earlier today when she just couldn't believe that 45-50% of US Americans completely reject evolution and that another 35-40% believe in what's sometimes called "theistic evolution" (God shaped and controlled an 'evolutionary'-type process to deliver his intended goals) and that only 9% (or so) of US Americans believe in "natural selection" (evolutionary progress through survival of the "fittest" or most adaptive). As both a very serious Christian and an educated woman (former college prof), she was amazed -- and dismayed -- by that handy set of internet facts. (Cheer up, almost no one in Europe or other advanced nations believes in 'Creationism.' And in the emerging nations they take science way too seriously to get distracted by their own equally charming but equally infantile creation myths.)

 

[The charm of some popular internet stuff, I have to admit, does escape me. I've been a member of Friendster and Myspace at the insistence of pals but I just can't bring myself to care (and the people you 'meet' are creepy as shit sometimes -- people who put up near-nude cheesecake and beefcake photos of themselves really creep me out). And, like anyone who uses them a lot, I have to admit to a love-hate relationship with online BBs.]

 

But, anyhow, man, I love the internet.

 

That, and my DVR.

[whitefang]

Bomb assembly instructions on the internet

Racist hate sites on the internet

Pedophile stalkers on the internet

pornography on the internet

Handgun purchases on the internet

Inaccurate news items on the internet

Identity theft through the internet

Viruses sent through the internet

Spam brought to you by the internet

Scam artists seeking victims on the internet

Kids forgetting how to spell on the internet(lol)

 

What's not to like?

 

But in spite of all that, there's much useful things about it, too. Some people like to do online shopping. Impossible for me, since I don't have any credit cards, and COD is pretty much a thing of the past. And though I mentioned the impossibility of finding out certain information on the net, there's at least this forum, and hundreds of others, that I could register in and ask somebody there. I could think of no easier way to communicate with someone from California, Vancouver, England or the Netherlands. Some would say that cooping yourself in a computer room and staring at a monitor is shutting yourself off from the world. But actually, It's put me in touch with more of the world than ever before. Oh, I'll still read books, newspapers and magazines. And I'll still handwrite letters. There's something special in that which the net otherwise takes away. But I can't write everyone in the world, and the net makes it possible to communicate that would be impossible otherwise.

 

Whitefang

[theblue1]

Um, where would you be looking it up if not on the internet?

 

I've spent my share of time in libraries, hell, I worked in a university library for the better part of a year.

 

And sure, if you've got a major university library and a lot of time, you might be able to beat the internet at some specific, specialized info, but there's a reason every library I've been in for most of the last decade has had internet access.

 

Yes, it has taken a while for things to come together, and, sorry dial-up folks, but you really are being left in the dust, an always-on connection (and a little extra bandidth) really does change everything. I scoffed myself until about midway through the first day I had my old DSL and then I said, yeah, this reall does change everything. (Mind you, I was already the kind of guy who logged on to check the cable TV listings and the headlines. But being always on removes the last inhibition to getting off your ass, information-wise, seems to me.)